Juliette Binoche

Juliette Binoche won an Oscar as best supporting actress for the 1996 movie The English Patient. (Binoche, playing a French Canadian nurse in the midst of a love affair with a Sikh bomb specialist, co-starred with Naveen Andrews, Ralph Fiennes and Kristin Scott-Thomas.) Binoche had already been a star in France for nearly a decade, known for her quiet intensity, ethereal beauty and shy smile. Her most prominent roles internationally include the innocent Tereza in The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988, with Daniel Day-Lewis) and the wandering shopkeeper Vianne in Chocolat (2000, with Johnny Depp). By 2006 Binoche had been eight times nominated for the César Award as best actress in France -- she won once, for the 1993 movie Bleu -- and she was again nominated for an Oscar as best actress for Chocolat. Her other roles include a nervous wife in Caché (2005), a Mary Magdalene-obsessed actress in Mary (2005) and Steve Carell's object of desire in Dan in Real Life (2007).